Call Me Back
by QueenPersephoneofHades
Summary: He's on the edge of existence, but nothing can hold him back when his little girl is crying.


The effect of going sub-atomic isn't instantaneous like he'd half expected, which he's incredibly grateful for. It gives him all the time he needs.

He manages to squeeze through the layers of armor in his way and enters the suit, which he then proceeds to rip apart from the inside with extreme prejudice. Don't let anyone tell you Scott Lang doesn't know how to hold a grudge against someone.

 _Especially when that someone had threatened his daughter._

He yanks and rips and punches everything within rapidly diminishing reach, and he can hear Cross's voice screaming all around him, outrage and pain and fear and profanities like you wouldn't believe, and Cassie's cries for help increase and Paxton's voice shouting nonsense as well, and he _decimates_ something that looked very important indeed and then Cross is gone; the suit is gone; the room is gone; _he_ is gone.

He isn't _anywhere_.

Images flash by rapidly; dust motes and molecules and atoms and then _nothing._

 _Nothing at all, except the black and the air his lungs were still impossibly breathing._

 _Hank had said he'd leave the universe behind._

 _He hadn't quite believed him until now._

* * *

Daddy disappeared again, grabbing onto the cyborg man's back and going out of sight as Paxton clutched her tight, maneuvering her behind him as he stood as a last, desperate shield against the lasers. "Stay behind me, honey," Paxton ordered, and she managed an "uh-huh" as he backed them up from the angry robot man that reminded her a little of the ones on TV a while ago.

The robot man started to say something, half garbled behind his mask, and the lasers glowed ominously. Cassie ducked behind her step-father's leg, clutching to his pants with all her might. "DADDY!" she shrieked, tears welling up as she realized the scary robot man was going to _kill_ them-

- _she didn't fully understand death, but she most certainly didn't want go through it without Daddy-_

But then the lasers' whine diminishes, and the robot man is snarling words she'd heard mommy tell her never to repeat, and Paxton's hand on her arm tightens slightly. She looks up in time to witness the bright flash as the robot shrinks again; only this time, he shrinks and shrinks and keeps shrinking until he's a brightly colored speck of yellow light hanging in her room, and even then he shrinks until there's absolutely nothing left at all.

Cassie blinks in bewildered wonder. Paxton is speechless beside her, grip going lax now that the robot has gone and they are now apparently safe-

"Daddy?" she repeated, because she just realized _he's not here where is he he grabbed onto the robot but the robot is gone where did they go_ "Daddy!"

Frantic, she darts forward, oblivious to Paxton's half-voiced protest as she stands in the exact same spot the scary robot man had been standing in. "Daddy where are you?!" she demands, spinning in a circle, expecting her father to be within her line of sight now, somehow.

He had to be here _somewhere_. People just didn't _disappear_ like that; weird stuff like that only happened in mommy's old sci-fi shows she watched on Thursday afternoons.

But Daddy's suit and the robot had seemed pretty sci-fi to her… and there was the ant and the train and the lasers…

No! That couldn't be right; disappearing wasn't natural! Daddy had to still be here! He _had_ to be!

"Daddy!" she yelled again, reaching up above her head; the last glowing light of the evil robot's body had been right above her; if she could just reach up there…

"Cassie," Paxton started, still dumbstruck but reaching for his stepdaughter like he aims to console her or comfort her, is bypassed completely when Cassie skirts around him and clambers on top of her bed, reaching for the spot where the speck of light had been.

"Daddy!" Cassie cried again, reaching out, blinking rapidly. He _couldn't_ be gone, he _wasn't,_ he just shrunk again _he was still here he wasn't gone_

 _"DADDY!"_

* * *

 _there is nothing._

 _no up, down, left, right, backwards, forwards, side to side._

 _no sun no moon no earth no sky no stars no light no dark no air_

 _but he is still breathing_

 _still here_

 _but not really here. not anywhere_

 _not living_

 _Nothing, but him, floating in blankness, curled up in a ball trying to hold in whatever remains of his lunch and breathe normally as the swooshing vertigo that hits his stomach every time he shrinks magnifies itself ten thousand times._

 _He squeezes his eyes shut, and tries to remember that this is worth it; that this horrifying, gut-wrenching terror is for Cassie's smile and Hope's approval and Hank's speech about doing it for the ones who matter. This is for them, the ones who were there when it mattered, who didn't give up on him like Maggie and Paxton and Dad did when the going got tough and he showed all the signs of a bad decision made worse by greed or fear or arrogance._

 _They are safe now, and it is worth it; it is worth this nothingness, this lifelessness, this agonizing pit in his stomach that doesn't seem to be going away ever at any time because now he is here to stay, forever and ever, just like selfless Janet van Dyne and her love for her husband and daughter and country, who saved a nation that would never even know of her sacrifice. He supposes he's a bit like her, now, in more ways than one; he was in the same boat as her, saving the world from Yellowjacket's menace without once being thanked, only to be shoved into a dimension of darkness forever inescapable even to the best crook. What happened to her wasn't fair, and a petulant part of him insists he didn't deserve this either._

 _Who could tell? He obviously didn't have the straightest moral compass._

 _But he wouldn't wish this hell on anyone. Except for Cross, which was good because he was here too. Was he floating somewhere, shrinking just as fast as Scott was? Was he nearby, out of sight? God, he hoped not; getting caught in eternal combat with that whack-job was not on his payroll, thank you. Then again, nothing was really on his pay-roll anymore, considering he was stuck in literal nowhere forever-_

" _-ADDY!"_

 _That made him twitch._

" _-_ _ **DADDY!**_ _"_

 _Warped and loud and desperate it may be, but he knew his baby girl's voice anywhere._

" _Cassie?" he murmured aloud, though he knew it was futile; he was so small now that any noise he made wouldn't even be considered the click of an ant's tiny feet on the floor._

 _He uncurled reluctantly, stiff arms letting his knees drop slightly as he lifted his head to stare vacantly at where the sky should have been._

 _He'd saved Cassie. It was over. He was stuck._

 _But apparently not._

" _ **DADDY, COME BACK!**_ _"_

 _His fists clenched at the wail in his daughter's voice, and grief ate at him like acid._

 _She was safe. She had Maggie and Paxton to look after her. He wouldn't be around to disappoint her anymore._

 _But that didn't matter to the terrified eight-year-old who'd just watched her father shrink into oblivion in her bedroom._

" _ **DADDY, WHERE ARE YOU?! COME BACK!**_ _"_

 _Scott flinched, his steady breathing losing its rhythm and rasping as he heard the distant panic in his little girl's cries._

 _He wanted, more than anything, to grab hold of his daughter and hug her until he couldn't let go, to hush her crying and comfort her the way he did after a nightmare, but no._

 _That wasn't happening, not ever again._

 _Hell, he was so small he couldn't even be held in her hand; he didn't exist back home anymore. That was a fact. An irreversible fact-_

 _Oh._

 _But was it really?_

 _For a second, Scott contemplated smacking himself on the head as hard as he could, but decided against it; breaking the helmet was the last thing he wanted to do, especially now that he had a plan._

 _Gloved fingers clumsy and scrabbling now that fervent hope and desperation were now coursing through him, he slipped while pulling the tiny disc out of his belt, letting it fall – or rather, float – from his fingers, heading off into the dark in an aimless journey, but he was having none of that._

 _No more screwing around._

 _He caught hold of the thing, gripping it tight between his fingers, making sure it wouldn't disappear without him, and twisted the cap of the shrinking regulator off._

 _The mechanism came apart in the zero gravity space it was, but he managed to keep a hold of the important bit he was aiming for. He took the throwing disc, set to reverse the Pym particles – his last one,_ _ **his last chance**_ _– and shoved it haphazardly into the regulator, taking the place of the broken shrinking disc that had been there before._

 _This could work._

 _This could take him back to the world._

 _Of course, the components could be completely incompatible and not work at all, but he decided to be optimistic for a few seconds._

 _It's not like he had anything to lose, anyway._

 _Twisting the regulator back together, he heaved a breath. Here went nothing._

 _A press of the button on his left hand, and he_ _ **grew.**_

 _Faster even than when he shrank, he flew past atoms and molecules and dust motes, out of the black nothing and into light_ everything.

* * *

A bright flash heralded his return, his feet crashing onto solid matter for the first time in infinity, and he almost topples then and there; he wrenches the mask off his face, gulping in mouthfuls of real air, hands thrown out to catch himself as he acclimates to his place in the real world.

He is where he was before, in the middle of Cassie's demolished bedroom, a humongous hole gaping in the side where a giant Thomas the Tank Engine had exploded into being, police lights flashing and alarms blaring, doing a number on the piercing headache he didn't remember having a few seconds ago.

Paxton is in the corner, gaping like a fish and thankfully not pointing a gun at him, but he ignores him.

He ignores everything else, aside from the tiny form on the still-intact bed.

Cassie, perfect little Cassie, is clutching her perfectly ugly birthday present to her chest, eyes wide and face wet with tears as she frantically took in his disheveled but very alive appearance at the foot of her bed.

"Hi, peanut," he manages to rasp, and she is up and off the furniture like a cannon shot, plowing into his midsection like a punch and driving the sweet, crisp air out of his lungs. He can't breathe for a few seconds, but he supposes he can forgive the incident when tiny sobs shiver up her frame and into his.

He eases down, wishing he wasn't wearing so much ridiculous leather so he could feel her warmth and her hair in his fingers as he patted her head gingerly.

"It's okay," he reassures, and it is, somehow; he was alive, no longer sub-atomic – _he can't remember how, or why, or what happened; he can't remember anything past punching Yellowjacket's suit into scrap, but that's alright for him_ – and none the worse for wear. Cassie was alive and safe, and Maggie and Paxton were too; Hope would take care of Hank, make sure he was alive.

He safely assumed that this was a win. For now. He'd probably be arrested in a few seconds, but he guessed that was okay too.

"Where did you go?!" Cassie demanded, glaring up at him with all the righteous indignation a distressed child could muster, "You scared me! Don't do that again!"

"I won't," he promised, and this one he well and truly did intend to keep, no matter what. "But I'm okay, Cassie. You called me back home, and I'm not going anywhere."

She buried her head into his chest, and he nuzzled his face into her hair, not at all caring if Paxton was around to see or waiting with handcuffs ready for him.

She was safe, he was home, and that's what mattered the most to him.

* * *

 **A/N: This movie completely screwed with my emotions. I know most people are flipping out over Wasp and all the Stucky feels from the end-credits scenes, but right now I don't really care about those. Father-daughter relationships are my greatest weakness.  
~Persephone**


End file.
